Gate of the Dead

by David Gilman

  Von Lienhard let the horsemen ride off on the flanks of the peasants. He would wait until the mob had seen him and his blazon so that they would recognize a knight who supported their cause during their next slaughter. As the heaving mass passed him, he raised his hand like the Pope in blessing to the wide-eyed grinning monkeys, drunk with bloodletting and power.

  ‘Satan awaits you, you turds,’ he said, knowing they could not understand him, and smiling as he kept up the pretence of solidarity with the peasants. ‘Retribution will come and you will cry out to a deaf God. And you will know the wrath of the nobility, who will peel the skin from your backs, rip the tongues from your mouths and put your families to the sword.’

  His companions eased their horses up alongside him.

  ‘Their stench alone is enough to make a horse retch,’ said von Groitsch. ‘Werner, this had better be profitable.’

  ‘Conrad, trust me. We shall ride the tide of terror home in a vessel of gold and silver,’ he said, nudging his horse to follow in the Jacquerie’s wake as great hooded crows glided and flapped through the pall of smoke, and then crabbed their way towards the tattered flesh that lay across the French knight’s courtyard.

  35

  Blackstone and Killbere made their way down from the citadel’s room, watched by a relieved Sir Ralph de Ferrers, glad to rid himself of two of Fortune’s men. They would find whatever reward the King had promised in the fields of blood, far beyond the walls of his jurisdiction.

  Killbere was anxious to challenge Blackstone’s lack of condemnation in front of de Ferrers. ‘A word or two against these lice-infected peasants might have eased his manner. A barrel of arrows wouldn’t have gone amiss.’

  ‘And you were as gentle as a mendicant monk begging for alms, were you?’

  ‘I am who I am, but you could have brought him around.’

  As they eased past sentries and clattered down the stone steps to the inner ward and their horses, Blackstone blew his nose with a finger and pulled on his gloves. Their journey had not yet properly started and already the odds were heavily stacked against finding his family alive.

  ‘Who’s to say they don’t have a reason?’ said Blackstone.

  Killbere looked incredulous. ‘You think you understand these turds?’ he growled.

  ‘I was a free man and never a serf, Gilbert, but you crush those you rule long enough and it’s more than their bones that break.’

  ‘Mother of Christ, they slaughter worse than the damned routiers. These aren’t aggrieved peasants at Santa Marina you can sway, Thomas. These devils have crawled out of the pit and rake their talons on the innocent.’

  ‘You think I side with them?’

  ‘I served my sworn lord when you were a snot-nosed peasant working in a quarry, living in a hovel. I know you, Thomas. Sweet Jesu! You see every man’s tortured soul as if it were his blazon. Scum, Thomas! Vile, vicious, evil, shit-stinking scum is what they are.’ He drew breath and grabbed the bigger man’s arm. ‘You were never that.’

  ‘And the noblemen who ride with them?’

  ‘Worse! I don’t know what’s worse than shit but they are. And when I find the word I will tell you. They should be hoisted and gutted and their entrails dragged from here to the end of the world by dogs. And I’m the man to see it done.’

  They reached their horses. Blackstone raised the stirrup strap and kneed the bastard horse in the belly. Standing this long would have let it bloat and when they rode the saddle strap could loosen and make the saddle unstable. The horse shook its head, rattling the bridle, half glancing backwards, ready to snap its yellow teeth given the chance. Blackstone tightened the strap another notch.

  ‘If Christiana and my children are in their path, Gilbert, I’m already too late. If the Dauphin’s family is at Meaux, then that’s our best chance to find them. These peasants might have just cause – I don’t care – but the King has bartered my pardon and family so that I can help him seize this godforsaken country.’

  Sir Gilbert sighed. ‘When you were a boy I was charged with taking you to war and instilling anger in your blood and love for your King in your heart. Perhaps I didn’t do it well enough.’

  Blackstone’s voice softened. ‘Gilbert, you are a cynical old bastard who did it too well. I serve our King whether he bartered or not. He is my sworn lord as you were once. One day his victories will give us all a chance to rule ourselves. But not as a mob.’

  Killbere grunted. ‘Then we kill as many of these Satan’s imps as we can.’

  ‘I know my duty, Gilbert.’

  ‘Good! Because that’s what gives us honour. That and sending these vile bastards back where they come from.’

  A gratified Killbere spurred his horse forward across the drawbridge and urged it into a canter along the track leading through the tufted marshlands and the heights where the men waited.

  Killing was a profession best honed by practice.

  *

  Blackstone gathered his men around him. He told them of his plan to try and reach the Dauphin’s family.

  Perinne rasped his palm over his crow’s-foot-scarred head. ‘I might know how we can get down to Meaux, Sir Thomas,’ he said. ‘I passed through it when I was a boy.’ He scratched a curve in the soft earth. ‘Town’s on the bend of the river. There’s a bridge, or was as I remember it, across to the stronghold. The walls are thick enough, and reinforced with towers and bastions. If they’re in there they’ll be as safe as lice in Will’s crotch.’

  ‘Nothing is safe near his cock,’ said Gaillard.

  ‘It’s a weapon of war,’ said Longdon.

  ‘By all accounts it’s outflanked by Brother Bertrand,’ Blackstone told his gathered captains, allowing them the moment of humour. ‘Good. Then Perinne will lead us. Gaillard knows the marshes around Calais so he will take us beyond them. The trick is not to be caught by the Dauphin’s forces, the routiers or the mob.’

  Meulon poked the fire with a stick. ‘What about Charles of Navarre?’

  ‘Him too,’ said Killbere.

  None of the men had a suggestion as to how a hundred of them could travel through countryside that teemed with potential enemies.

  ‘Why don’t we find Navarre and join forces with him? He must want to get hold of the Dauphin and his family as much as our sovereign lord,’ said Will Longdon.

  ‘And use them to bargain his way to the crown or have them on a gibbet,’ said Blackstone. ‘Our Lord Edward wants them alive; Navarre plays a game of his own choosing.’

  ‘With many an English mercenary at his back,’ said John Jacob.

  ‘Perhaps it’s the King’s plan to use him to seize Paris now they support the uprising,’ said Meulon.

  ‘None of us can know who to trust,’ said Blackstone. ‘Navarre wants the crown, as does our King. One force plays against the other, but whoever plays the game the best will win.’

  ‘Some game it is then, Sir Thomas, if the French crown is being tossed in the air like a fairground prize,’ the big Norman answered.

  ‘Aye, and we’re in the middle of it,’ said Longdon.

  ‘It’s no bad place to be,’ said Gaillard. ‘The middle of a wheel is what makes it go round. We can control what we need to.’

  ‘By the sweat of Jesu’s brow, Gaillard, I swear you do not see it,’ said Longdon. ‘What goes through the middle of a wheel? A shaft. What is a shaft other than like a spear or...’ Longdon poked him with the feathered end of an arrow shaft, whose fletching he was carefully repairing. ‘An arrow?’ He circled thumb and forefinger and then poked a finger through it. ‘Middle. Shaft. Us.’

  Blackstone squatted by the fire. It would soon be dark and no progress would be made travelling through hostile territory at night. ‘Will, see it as a wheel if you must, but let it be a wheel of fortune. We’ll ignore them all and seek out the Dauphin’s family. All we have to do is save them from the mob and see them secure somewhere. Once word gets back to our King then we decide what it is we want to do.’

&
nbsp; Killbere stood and looked around him. They were in a good defensive position, and an attacker would be hard-pressed to make his way through the tufted, uneven ground of the marshlands at night, but a local peasant could sniff them out and lead anyone wishing to do them harm.

  ‘Captains, get the men fed, the horses hobbled and tethered. Keep them saddled. Set pickets through the night. No fires. As Sir Thomas said, we don’t trust anyone.’

  ‘Not even the Captain of Calais?’ asked Longdon. ‘He’s the King’s man.’

  ‘Not even the King’s mother,’ answered Killbere.

  ‘Especially not her,’ said Blackstone under his breath.

  *

  The men rolled themselves into their blankets, finding what meagre comfort was to be had on the forest floor. Killbere watched as Stefano Caprini, who always kept himself on the edge of the camp, knelt in prayer; then Sir Gilbert spread his blanket and kicked leaves and moss to make a passable hollow for his hip. Blackstone was already stretched out, sword at his side. It would not be long before the darkness covered them and neither man would be able to see the other, no matter how close they were.

  Killbere jerked his head towards Caprini. ‘Why is he still here?’ he asked

  ‘Canterbury was a disappointment. No discomfort or misery to be had,’ said Blackstone.

  Killbere’s brow furrowed, and then he realized that Blackstone was jesting. ‘Ah, right. Now that he has the pleasure of a damp forest, cold food and the joy of Will Longdon’s complaints – I ask again: why is he still here?’

  ‘He confessed his sin,’ said Blackstone, turning onto his side so that his words might not drift further than Killbere next to him.

  ‘Don’t tell me he’s another damned Brother Bertrand who has found fornication to be a greater delight than self-pleasure,’ said Killbere.

  ‘Where is he, by the way?’

  ‘Kept with the horses. Thank God we have no mares. He fetches and carries and does it well enough. He has a permanent grin on his face, so he’s a happy bastard.’

  ‘Gilbert, only idiots smile all the time.’

  Killbere sighed in agreement. ‘We pulled him from a peasant’s hovel two days after we arrived, suckling like a piglet on the swineherd’s wife’s teats. We had to pay the man off with a handful of salt.’ He unwrapped a half-loaf of bread and cut a piece, which he handed to Blackstone. The stillness of the forest deadened most sound, but here and there a man coughed, or a murmur gently carried. The quietness of the place made it seem obligatory to speak barely above a whisper.

  Blackstone glanced into the near-darkness where the Tau knight prayed. He shook his head, remembering. ‘A strange fellow. We reached Canterbury,’ he said, tugging the crust with his teeth. ‘The place was tight with pilgrims – and he spent a half-day at prayer while I had the horses newly shod. And then...’

  Killbere sensed his friend’s uncertainty and stayed silent while Blackstone found the words.

  ‘And then he returned from the cathedral, and knelt before me saying that Father Torellini had told him to stay at my side until my journey was done.’

  ‘Back to Italy?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Blackstone. ‘He said he had intended only to get me safely across the mountains and to Canterbury, but he was to be granted indulgences by the Pope for every day he was away. And then... then he told me that a man must die with his sins cleansed, without regret in his heart and as poor as Christ.’

  ‘No sharing of the spoils for him, then,’ said Killbere with a satisfied grunt.

  ‘It was strange, Gilbert. I value his fighting skills and I couldn’t deny him his duty. And then he said that he’d had a vision when he’d prostrated himself where Thomas Becket was slain.’

  ‘Holy men and visions make me more fearful than witches and their familiars. What kind of vision?’

  ‘He didn’t say... only that I would need God’s comfort.’

  The two men fell silent. After a moment’s thought Killbere cleared the congealed bread from the roof of his mouth with a fingernail and sucked it free. ‘Priests, friars, monks and soothsayers: they all dabble in the black arts. Steer clear of them all and pray to Christ before a fight is what I say. That’s the best men like us can do.’

  ‘And trust the men at our shoulder and back. You taught me that,’ Blackstone answered. ‘And it’s brought us this far.’

  There was no answer other than Killbere’s rhythmic breathing. He was already asleep.

  Blackstone turned into his blanket and, as he settled his face into the sweet-smelling moss and leaves, he saw the darkness move. The blazon on the Tau knight’s cloak had caught the glow of filtered moonlight as he rose from his prayers, and then the darkness took it like a magician’s spell. No sight, no sound. As if Fra Stefano Caprini had been a dark angel come to count the souls he was owed.

  Blackstone pulled Wolf Sword closer to his chest and then kissed the silver goddess Arianrhod. The question he had not asked at Canterbury was: whom did the Tau knight mean when he said a man must die cleansed of his sins? Caprini or Blackstone?

  36

  The terror came across the broad moonlit fields. There was no need for torches as the mob moved with slow, relentless determination: at first in no formation, but as if blown by the wind, like dandelion seeds across the low-cut meadows; then, as if drilled, they gathered in a great arc – a bull’s horns to entrap the unfortunates within the manor house, their approach the more frightening in its silence, with only the steady sound of shuffling footfalls. As some trampled their way through the vegetable gardens, others came ant-like down the corridors of the vineyards. They slowed and then halted as they reached the low walls and saw the glint of moonlight on armour. The mob’s leader raised a fist clutching a billhook, and more than four hundred peasants behind him followed his example.

  ‘Renounce your nobility and your status and swear allegiance to those you have oppressed during your unnatural life as lord of this demesne,’ the man cried, his voice echoing across the courtyard.

  Christiana and Henry stood in an upper-storey room, pressed against the wall, hardly daring to peep around the window opening. Agnes was further back, wide-eyed with a child’s fear, wondering why her mother and the brother she had not seen for so long held knife and sword at the ready. The man’s voice had resounded through the house and she saw her mother turn towards her and smile in encouragement. She had been told to be brave, but she found no comfort in her mother’s words. For days they had hidden from those who wished to harm them and she did not know why they were being hunted.

  The ghostly figures that had come across the landscape had taken those in the house by surprise, but the sentries had seen the fields waver in a tide of shadows and raised the alarm, snatching those in the house from their sleep.

  ‘Be ready to go downstairs,’ she had warned Agnes. ‘Stay silent and hold back your tears. We will be all right. Lady Marguerite and her children will be with us,’ her mother had added. But Lady Marguerite was not with them. She was in her chamber in the wing of the manor house, where firelight gave them light and warmth. Here in the cold, unlit chamber there was nothing but the ghostly shadows cast through the window opening, and bare boards that smelled of dog and lavender seeds. She shivered and wished she was with the other two children, huddled by the fire with their mother.

  Christiana dared to peer around the opening.

  ‘Mother!’ Henry hissed at her. ‘They’ll see you!’

  The chill that Christiana felt was not from the night, but from the cold understanding that they would not survive the night unless they reached the cellar. And it would have to be done in darkness, because the moment the mob saw a torchlight they would swarm after it. She hesitated as, below, Sir Marcel made his appeal. Could the knight’s name and reputation be enough to hold them back? Would they bypass the manor and take their terror elsewhere? Sir Marcel stood on the low rampart, resplendent in his armour, but unable to hide the uncertainty in his voice at the sight of such
a vast mob.

  ‘I am Sir Marcel de Lorris. And there are those among you who know me and who have been favoured by my family’s goodwill. Take what livestock and food you need but leave my home and my family in peace, I beg you, in God’s good name.’

  Christiana watched fearfully. There had been no assault against the walls, no roar from the mob – instead there was the most terrifying sound. Laughter. Their leader laughed. And Christiana knew it was already too late. She turned and ran to Agnes with Henry a couple of paces behind her when a scream of utter terror squeezed a mailed fist around her heart. They were already in the house.

  ‘Downstairs!’ she hissed, catching Agnes’s hand.

  Behind her she heard a woman’s sobbing. Marguerite! There was nothing she could do. The mob had infiltrated that wing of the house, drawn by the firelight. And then the mob bellowed from outside.

  Cries of pain came from the courtyard as soldiers loosed their crossbow bolts and the men-at-arms slashed at the ghostly horde. As she ran past the windows towards the stairwell she glimpsed the uneven fight and wished there had been a contingent of English archers in the yard. They would not be able to stop the hundreds but they would have brought so many down in such a short time that the attack might have faltered.

  She stopped suddenly. Noises from downstairs meant they were already below; they had rushed past the feeble defence and were already stripping out the house’s wealth. More voices carried, harsh and commanding, as the mob’s leaders called them to halt and bear witness. Sweat ran down her back and she cursed the layers of clothes that hampered her. Her daughter began to gulp great sobs and she went down on one knee to quickly assure her.

  ‘No noise. Bite your tongue if you have to, but do not cry out.’ With trembling hands she cupped the child’s face and kissed her, then took a tight grip of her hand.

  ‘Mother.’ Henry’s urgent whisper made her turn. Her son stood at a window, back against the wall, sword still in hand but with a look that told her the screams she heard belonged to his master’s wife. She dragged Agnes with her, desperately unwilling to let the child go. She held the girl to her as those she had heard in the lower hallway scuttled like rats to witness the atrocity inflicted on the lord of the manor.